Pretty as a Picture Page 9

“Are you okay?” Tony asks, coming over, shaking a few shards out of his own hair.

  “I don’t know,” Liza says. “What do you think?”

  “You’re upset,” Anjali says, joining them. “I get that. But please, don’t worry. This was just a freak accident. We’ll be back up and running in no time.”

  “A freak accident,” Liza repeats, flatly.

  Anjali nods. But for the first time since I’ve met her, the movement is tentative.

  “I think we’re starting to stretch the definition of freak,” Liza mutters.

  Tony reaches into Liza’s hair and finds a piece of glass the hairdressers missed. “Are things really so terrible?” he asks.

  Eileen snorts.

  Tony’s hand stills for a split second before continuing. “You have to trust me, Liza. Trust that I know what I’m doing—and trust that I’m doing it for a reason.”

  She sighs. “Okay, but—”

  “I would never put you in danger,” he continues. “I’m not a madman.”

  “But Tony—”

  “And you don’t think I’m a madman, do you, Liza?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  Almost absently, he brushes a strand of hair off her face. A tendon in the side of her neck flexes. Her lower lip trembles.

  Tony taps it with his thumb.

  “There it is,” he says, tender, soft. “You keep losing it.” Then, without breaking eye contact, “Dice, can you rig something up, get us going?”

  The DP looks up from his MacBook. His mouth opens and closes several times before he answers. “Give me twenty.”

  “Good. I want everyone ready to go once the lights are back up.” He turns and finds me in the crowd, his expression grim. “Everyone but you, that is.”

  TEN

  I march out into the lobby, Tony and Anjali behind me, preparing to be fired for the second time in my life.

  Under normal circumstances, it’s pretty hard to fail at my job. By the time the footage makes its way to me, there’s only so much that can go wrong, and most of that has to do with proprietary software. It’s tough to fumble the basics. Cinematic grammar is so deeply engrained in the culture, you could probably pluck a six-year-old off the street and she’d be able to put together a half-decent assembly cut. There’s a reason you rarely finish a movie and think, “Wow, that editing was terrible.”

  And, even then, it was probably the director’s fault.

  The only time I was fired, I was working on a high-profile, effects-heavy movie—a franchise reboot—and honestly, I never should have taken the job to begin with. But I was young and excited about the chance to assist an editor I admired, and cutting Amy’s delicate, impressionistic short films wasn’t exactly paying the rent. It wasn’t even paying the water bill.

  It became clear very quickly that even though I was green and totally new to that kind of big-budget workflow, the director was even more out of his depth.

  But then, he was a franchise reboot, too: the son of an A-list director.

  The night it happened, we had been cloistered together in the cutting room for ten hours along with the lead editor and three suits from the studio. We were trying to come up with a solution for I can’t even remember what when the director barked at me to pull up coverage that I knew for a fact simply did not exist.

  I looked to my boss for guidance, but he chose that moment to discover a sudden, all-consuming interest in a miniscule imperfection in the fabric of his jeans.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally said, “but I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” asked the director.

  “Because you didn’t get any close-ups for this scene.”

  “I absolutely did. It’s on the shot list.”

  “No, you decided to skip them. And when I got the rushes and came and asked you about it, you said, ‘Fuck close-ups, that wide shot is bomb.’”

  My boss looked up from his jeans.

  “I remember,” I explained, “because you said ‘bomb’ and not ‘the bomb,’ and it sort of stuck with me.”

  Later, my boss told me that if I’d just accepted responsibility, he would have been able to keep me on. Everyone in the room understood that the mistake was the director’s, but we weren’t allowed to openly acknowledge it. The fact that I’d done so could only mean one thing.

  I was officially combative.

  I related this all to Amy, hoping she could help me pinpoint where I’d gone wrong, but she rolled her eyes and said, “That’s just Hollywood slang for a woman who uses declarative sentences.”

  * * *

  —

  “You were supposed to be here an hour ago” is the first thing Tony says to me. Not the most auspicious start.

  “If you wanted me to come straight here,” I say, carefully, “someone should have told me.”

  “That one was actually my fault,” Anjali puts in, brightly. “I had to stop to deal with Gavin.”

  “Do we have a problem there?” Tony asks.

  “I mean, I caught him with those girls again, but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.” She pauses. “Those are two sentences that really shouldn’t go together.”

  Tony hooks a finger behind his ear and rubs at the skin there. “Have Wade deal with it. I have too many girls to think about as it is.”

  On that note, he turns to me, and this is it, I guess. The moment of truth. I study his face as carefully as I dare. His eyebrows are in a neutral position, and the left side of his mouth looks to be a little higher than the right, which I think might be the start of a smile—unless it’s the start of a frown.

  I try not to twist my hands together.

  “I’m sure you can appreciate that this is an unusual situation,” Tony says. “I’ve never had to hire a new editor, sight unseen, halfway through a movie.”

  “As hard as that is to believe,” Anjali adds.

  Tony spreads his hands. “I’m trying to do something here.”

  She takes an exaggerated step back. “Okay, okay, you’re the boss. I’ll go—yell at some people or something. You okay on your own, Marissa?”

  My brow furrows. “You mean with Tony?”

  “Yeah—I can send in a PA if you’d like.”

  Oh. Oh, right. It’s been a while since I’ve had to work closely with a man. Things are different now, aren’t they? Or at least we’re saying they are. I give myself a moment to think about it. While I’m not exactly comfortable with the idea of being alone with Tony, I’m even less comfortable acknowledging that I’m not comfortable, because that would make everyone else uncomfortable, too. Seems like kind of a glitch in the post-#MeToo matrix.

  “I’m good,” I say eventually.

  “Cool, cool. I’ll be back in a bit with your keys and phone.”

  “Phone?”

  I wrench my gaze away from Anjali’s departing figure to find that Tony’s also moved on without me. I scramble to catch up.

  “—by the time we get to set, I’ve typically had a few months’ prep with my editor,” he’s saying. “But obviously I don’t have that luxury now.”

  “Wait—you’re not firing me?”

  We stop next to the concession stand. He sweeps back a red velvet curtain to reveal a heavy wooden door, an open padlock hanging from the loop of a rusted hasp. He pulls the door open. “Sounds like someone’s been listening to stories,” he says, his expression bland.

  I wince and step through the door, thankful beyond measure that it’s dim enough to hide the embarrassed flush that’s licking at my cheekbones like wildfire. There’s barely any light back here—at the end of the hall, a single, flickering bulb hangs a few feet above the ground—but Tony’s obviously familiar with the space. He leads us easily through the near-darkness, steering me around two separate spiderwebs. We stop at the foot of a steel spiral stair
case, twenty feet high and very narrow. We ascend one at a time, the structure jolting and swaying with each step.

  At the top, I squeeze through an opening so narrow I have to take a second on the other side to collect myself.

  I’m still catching my breath when I feel the heat of Tony’s body behind me.

  “This is where you’ll be working,” he says, his mouth in line with my ear.

  It’s the theater’s projection room—and it’s set up for 35mm. I ignore the editing bay and rush over to the projector, a Philips DP70 with a three-deck Christie Autowind. Neither machine, I admit, is elegant to the modern eye. The DP70 is big and beige and boxy, and the Autowind is borderline ridiculous: three stacked aluminum platters, each about four feet wide, secured to a turquoise frame.

  To me, however—

  I have to resist the urge to spin in an awestruck circle.

  The projectionist is busy scowling into the DP70’s innards, and I catch myself craning my neck around, eager to see what he’s doing.

  “I haven’t seen one of these since high school,” I say.

  Tony peers over my shoulder. “I’m old enough to remember when we still had to do changeovers.”

  I’m grateful my back is to him, because I feel myself pull the kind of face Amy always smacks me on the shoulder for. I could be 105 years old and working on my thirty-fifth feature, and some man would still find a way to imply he’s been in the business longer than I have.

  “The ST 200 came out in sixty-eight and the Autowind in seventy-one,” I say. “If you remember changeovers, it’s from your History of Projection elective at NYU.”

  I duck under Tony’s arm and head over to inspect the front of the projector. It’s not one I’ve worked with, but I’ve read about it—they have two at the Egyptian, and they used to have one at Grauman’s—and when I run my fingers over it, the sprockets and stabilizers are as familiar to me as my own bones.

  I go up on tiptoe and peer over the top of the lens. Next to it, positioned in the right-hand side of the projection window, is a small black box: an NEC digital projector. It’s about 1/100th the size of the DP70 and of proportionate appeal.

  “For the dailies,” Tony says, unnecessarily.

  “Shame we’re not shooting on film,” I say, just as uselessly.

  “Not with these actors.” His shoulder is so close to mine I can feel the space between us.

  I move briskly to the opposite side of the room. There, along the wall, is a water-stained three-seater and an eight-foot-long melamine table. On top of the table are a microwave and a hotplate, a six-pack of single-serve Easy Mac, an unopened box of Constant Comment; beneath it is a stack of flattened pizza boxes. I pick up a mug that’s been left next to the hotplate and glance inside. Whatever was in there has long since gone sticky and solid.

  My gaze lands on a blue plaid blanket hanging over the arm of the sofa. I lift a corner and rub it between my fingers. I wonder if there’s a pillow up here somewhere or if the last editor had to make do.

  The question just gurgles up out of me, really.

  “Why did you fire Paul?”

  Tony presses his lips together, glances at the projectionist. “Gary?”

  Gary tosses his wrench in his toolbox and scrambles to his feet. “I’m gone.”

  Tony watches him leave, waiting for the last clanging echoes of the man’s descent down the metal staircase to fade away. Then he leans a shoulder against the wall and crosses his arms.

  “Surely you’ve heard how I work.”

  “I have some idea.” And then, because I simply can’t help it, “And don’t call me Shirley.”

  He clears his throat. “Yes, well, you know, then, that I require absolute dedication from my cast and crew.”

  I can’t help but glance at the makeshift kitchen. “Are you telling me the guy who practically lived here wasn’t committed enough?”

  “If time was all that mattered to me, I’d hire insomniacs or buy a kilo of coke. I’m talking about dedication to your role. My editor needs to be my anchor—my compass. When I look at footage, I’m seeing the eight million or so decisions that went into each shot. You, however, can focus on the little picture: what’s in the frame.”

  I scrunch up my nose. “I mean, of course. That’s basically the textbook description of—”

  He holds up a finger. “Which also means I don’t want you spending time with the actors. So, I don’t want to see you in the bar. I don’t want to see you in the café. I don’t want to see you at hair and makeup, gossiping with the stylists. Occasionally, like today, I will ask you to join me on set. Otherwise, I prefer that you spend your time here or in your room.”

  “I’m—”

  “I understand that this may seem restrictive, but this is an unusual situation. Many of the people involved in this case are still on the island. In fact, some are in this hotel with us right now. And not all of them are as devoted to the notion of objectivity as we are.”

  I frown. “If you’re so worried about outside influences, why didn’t you just let me stay in LA?”

  He shakes his head. “No, that wouldn’t work at all. I like my toys where I can see them.”

  At this, my face does something indescribable.

  He laughs, but not like you would at a joke. “Look at you. Less than an hour into the job, and already you’re thinking about quitting.”

  My eyes narrow. “Why would you say that?”

  “So you’re not thinking about running back to California?”

  “I was thinking about running back to California the second I landed,” I admit.

  He pushes off the wall and closes the distance between us. “We could make a great movie together, you and I. You may not be able to see the shape of it yet, but this isn’t just some true crime cash grab. This story actually matters. You could really make a difference with this one. But you have to trust the process.”

  That easy drawl of his has gone even easier, so easy it makes me think of that cat from reception, of the way I massaged the spot just behind the hard ridge of her jaw, and I think maybe he wants me to roll over and go boneless and not notice that he’s telling me—gently, sweetly—that he’s going to keep me under house arrest for the next six weeks.

  I stare down at my feet and do a quick calculation: It would take ten minutes to get back to the lobby, another ten to track down a car. Thirty minutes to the dock, five minutes to throw up, twenty-seven minutes to Lewes. Two and a half hours to Philly, five and a half hours to LAX, fifteen minutes to Ladera Heights. Factoring in a few delays and the time change, I could be at Pann’s in time for breakfast.

  But—then what? Find a new Airbnb? Beg Nell not to fire me?

  How hard can six weeks of work be, anyway? It’s not like he’s asking for anything too difficult or outrageous. And I’m not exactly a social butterfly to begin with. It might even be nice. I won’t have to come up with excuses for why I don’t want to hang out with everybody on our nights off.

  I make myself lift my chin.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I can do that.”

  He nods. “Good. Now, this is the last time we’re going to talk about Paul, do you understand?”

  “But—”

  “The last time.”

  I hold up my hands. “Okay.”

  He takes the blanket, folds it into quarters, and tosses it to the other side of the sofa. “Come on—let’s get you set up.”

  I follow him over to the editing bay in the near corner of the room. It’s a standard setup: L-shaped desk, three HD screens, two nearfield studio monitors; a keyboard, mouse, and a Mackie compound mixer. An overpriced chair with six separate adjustment points. Tacked up on the wall to the right are several rows of reference stills, each one corresponding to a scene and shot number, a visual index of everything that’s been filmed so far. I examine the stills,
my gaze naturally landing on the photo of Liza they showed me at my interview.

  “How long did it take them to find her?” I ask. “The real girl, I mean.”

  Tony rubs his hand over his mouth. “The coroner’s estimate was sixteen to twenty hours postmortem, but no one’s sure how long she was on the beach. She looked like she was sleeping. A hundred people probably walked by her that day and didn’t realize she was dead.”

  I frown. “How do you get a body out onto a public beach without anyone seeing?”

  “That’s one of the things we’re here to ask.”

  “So this is an unsolved mystery?”

  Tony slides his hands in his pockets. “Technically. No one was ever charged.”

  “And you’re going to try to solve it?”

  “Of course not.” The corner of his mouth moves. “I’ll leave that to the audience. An argument’s more convincing if you let them think they’ve figured it out themselves.”

  I blink. “That’s what my brother always says about his son.”

  “Does he?”

  “His son’s six.”

  A pause. “Ah.”

  I let out a shaky breath and turn back to the photos. I feel like there’s something else I should be asking, but my brain’s already allocating resources to the project in front of me, making lists, running through the narrative algorithms I’ve been compiling since the day my dad brought home that VCR. The possible storylines are unspooling in my head without any effort at all—there will be the victim, her family, her friends, a boyfriend (probably), the police, the perpetrator, the prosecution, a key witness or two—

  “Marissa?”

  I come back to myself with a start. A few feet away, Gary’s at work on the projector; Tony is nowhere to be found.

  How long have I been looking at these pictures?

  I rub my eyes and turn to see who’s at the door. It’s Anjali and a woman I haven’t yet met, a bare-faced almost-blonde in a cropped white T-shirt and baggy jeans. She has the mercurial, apple-cheeked beauty you sometimes see on Eastern European actresses: She’ll look twenty years old her whole life so long as she stays thin, but the moment she gains five pounds, she’ll look fifty.